Barack Obama: New kid on the political block

He's barely two years into his term as a senator, yet already this Democrat from Hawaii is being described as the exciting future of American politics and quite possibly the first black President of the United States

Book signings can be soul-destroying for authors, especially if few people show up and if even fewer actually buy the book being hawked. When the author is a politician, peddling thoughts on public policy (title: The Audacity of Hope), these rules apply even more harshly. How, then, to explain the 1,200 people who turned up last week to a book signing in San Rafael, California? Or the fact they actually paid $125 for the privilege? The answer is simple: the author was Barack Obama.

Perhaps no other politician in America is generating as much buzz as the Democrat senator from Illinois. News articles and magazines are full of speculation that Obama will run for the White House in 2008.

His handsome, dark face currently stares out from the cover of Time magazine and his book tour has the feel of a nascent presidential campaign. Reporters and TV crews hound his every move. This is rock star fame.

And nor are Obama and his team guiltless in generating this carnival of media speculation. For many months, he has been firm in denying any plans to make a White House run this time. Then, suddenly, he has let it slip that the door is not shut after all. A decision now will come after early November's midterm elections. It has sent Washington's political classes into a frenzied examination of the political tea leaves. Could he pull it off? Could he unite America? Is he ready?

Cutting through the hype, the insider wisdom says it is still too soon for Obama. His national career is just two years old and he is too fresh-faced for a tilt at the biggest prize in global politics. Still, his career stretches ahead of him and he will run for the White House at some stage. Obama in 2008? Probably not. But Obama in 2012, 2016 or 2020? A certainty.

That is why 1,200 people show up to his book signings. That is why people scream when seeing him. When he walks by, people believe they have just seen the first black President of America.

Barack Obama was born on 4 August 1961 in Hawaii, to a black Kenyan father and a white American woman from Kansas. His father, Barack Obama Snr, was a visiting foreign student at university in Hawaii where he met and married Ann Dunham, the corn-fed product of Kansas parents, who was also studying at the college. The marriage ended quickly and Obama Snr left when his child was just two years old.

Obama spent four years in Indonesia when his mother married another foreign student, but the role of Hawaii cannot be overstated. It is a place apart from the rest of America. It is where native Hawaiians, Japanese Americans, whites and blacks have all blended into a common culture that is far removed from the more racially divided states of mainland America. In his first autobiographical book, Dreams From My Father, Obama talks of growing up happily racially unaware. 'That my father looked nothing like the people around me barely registered in my mind,' he wrote.

It was not to last. The influence of the rest of America increased as Obama grew and he became racially aware, defining himself as black (after all, that is how America would define him). He became a teenage tearaway, experimenting with drugs such as marijuana and cocaine and alcohol. But his wild side did not hurt his academic career. Partying aside, Obama excelled at school and won a place first at California's Occidental College and then at Columbia University, majoring in political science.

He embraced political activism as his contact with mainland urban black culture cemented an ethnic identity in his mind. Yet at first, the young Obama was keenly aware of being from a different background to most American blacks. His black skin does not come from former slaves. It comes from a Kenyan academic. He grew up middle class on Waikiki Beach, not Harlem or Detroit. This led to a self-confessed 'radical pose' on campus.

Yet gradually, Obama realised his biracial identity could be a source of strength, not division. He shed much of his early radicalism and when he graduated, moved to Chicago where he threw himself into working for non-profit community groups helping the city's many poor blacks.

Some of these groups were church-run and it was here that he gradually embraced a religious way of thinking about politics and became more overtly Christian. Obama was now convinced he needed to be an agent for social change. The next obvious step was a stint at Harvard Law School, where he again excelled.

He then returned to Chicago to work for a civil rights law firm, ignoring lucrative corporate offers, and eventually began his political career. Obama's friends say he wanted to be mayor of Chicago, but he wound up winning an Illinois state senate seat in 1996.

He then began to look for a national stage and tried to win a 2000 congressional battle that would have sent him to Washington. But the seat he wanted was already held by former Black Panther Bobby Rush. In a tough fight, Rush claimed Obama was not 'black enough' and defended his turf. Obama's career looked to be becalmed.

But then Obama proved he has something that all politicians envy: good luck. He had met and married a young lawyer, Michelle Robinson, and they had two young daughters. The couple decided on an 'up or out' strategy. Obama would have to succeed at his next campaign or leave politics.

In 2004, his chance came. A Senate seat unexpectedly came free and Obama stunned Illinois Democrats by winning the primary with a straight-talking, multiracial style that appealed to whites as well as blacks. Then his strong Republican opponent, who had been sent in from outside the state by his party, was the subject of a destructive sex scandal. Suddenly, rank outsider Obama was cruising to victory.

He was also gaining the attention of the Democratic party. When John Kerry asked him to deliver a speech at the 2004 Democratic convention in Boston, he was introduced to America as a whole. His barnstorming performance, speaking eloquently of the need for unity during a bitterly divisive campaign, made him an overnight sensation. Obama-mania had been born and it has not let up since. By 2005, Time was hailing him as one of the world's 100 most influential people. Rarely has one man come to embody so many hopes and dreams so quickly.

But what is the secret to this appeal? Part of it is undoubtedly his ethnicity. He's black enough to be hailed as a black political leader and yet his African background and Midwestern accent make him appealing to whites. His religious speech comes naturally and strikes a chord with Americans of all political stripes. It is a marked contrast to the stilted religious utterances of John Kerry or Howard Dean. Obama could be the man who convinces America's religious voters that their values are shared by Democrats.

He is also movie-star handsome, with a 6ft 2in frame, engaging smile and ready wit that has won him many personal admirers in the Republican party. His closest friend in the Senate is fellow newcomer Tom Coburn, a conservative Republican. He has embraced the internet, podcasting from the Senate and being known to post entries on political blogs.

He has even featured in rap songs. Hip hop star Jadakiss rapped during one number: 'Why is Bush acting like he is trying to get Osama? Why don't we impeach him and elect Obama?' He also writes like he speaks, with a poetic cadence that would be the envy of many literary giants and stands out in a political world that values hectoring and posturing.

But perhaps Obama's true value lies away from the usual areas of race and religion. It lies in the generation he represents: the post-baby boomers. For four decades, American politics has been scarred by the psychodrama of the boomers.

From Vietnam to Iraq, from the sexual revolution to abortion, the culture wars have raged and been encapsulated in the dynastic struggle between the Clintons and the Bushes. It has created a politics of division where consensus is to be shunned. It meant that 2004's election was yet again all about what Kerry or George W Bush did or did not do in Vietnam. Yet Obama (and perhaps increasingly America too) is beyond all that.

He was born in the 1960s but they did not shape him. Vietnam, for him, is history, not personal experience. Obama is waiting firmly in the wings now. The Clintons (and the Bushes and the John McCains of the world) are starting to look like America's past. Obama looks like its future.

The Obama lowdown

Born 4 August 1961 in Hawaii. His father was a Kenyan foreign student and his mother a white American from Kansas. His father left when Obama was two and he saw him only once again in his life. He died in Kenya in a car crash. His mother is also now dead.

Best of times At the 2004 Democratic convention in Boston, Obama was given the chance of playing on America's national stage. His speech catapulted him to the front of Democrat politics. He has never left.

Worst of times On a trip to Kenya in 1988, Obama found that his mother's hero worship of his dead father was misplaced. Far from being a rich and successful academic, he had, in fact, died an alcoholic and almost broke.

What he says 'I'm so overexposed, I make Paris Hilton look like a recluse.'

What others say 'Barack's got the capability, I believe, to be a leader of America, not a leader of Democrats.' Senator Tom Coburn, one of the most conservative Republicans in the Senate.